Since the seminal decision of the Supreme Court of the case of Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board [2015] UKSC 11 there have been a number of attempts to push the boundaries in clinical negligence consent cases.

On Monday 16th April 2018, the Government published the long anticipated Pre-Action Protocol for Resolution of Package Travel Claims, having the previous week confirmed that such claims will be subject to fixed recoverable costs.

Richard Paige looks at the case of Shaw v Kovak & Others [2017] and how the Court of Appeal in Kovak found that a failure to obtain informed consent and the resulting infringement of personal autonomy, does not give rise to a claim for damages in its own right.

Earlier this month I wrote a summary of the case of Maciula v EUI in which the lead Claimant’s whole claim was struck out pursuant to s.57 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 as a result of the fundamental dishonesty of his credit hire claim.

In the last couple of years there has been an explosion in the number of holiday sickness claims in the UK. It has reached epidemic proportions so rapidly that all the national newspapers have run stories about hotel owners, mostly in Mediterranean resorts, threatening to ban British holidaymakers.

In the case of Shaw v Kovac & others [2017] EWCA Civ 1028 the Court of Appeal considered the question of whether a claimant could recover damages for “infringement of the [claimant’s] right of autonomy” as a free-standing head of loss, when they had been treated in the absence of informed consent.

Richard Paige, instructed by Keoghs’ Toby Evans, successfully appealed the decision of District Judge Goudie, resulting in a finding that the Claimant, who had brought a personal injury claim following a road traffic accident, was “fundamentally dishonest” pursuant to CPR 44.16(1).

On 12 February 2015, the Criminal Injuries and Courts Act 2015 received royal assent. In it are 5 sections addressing issues of significant importance and interest to PI lawyers: cases of fundamental dishonesty and inducements.